IMT-GT is truly facing a new era of development and interest from its Development Partners.

Two Development Partners (the Government of Japan and Economic Research Institute of ASEAN and East Asia – ERIA) were welcome by the IMT-GT Ministers and Senior Officials during the 16th IMT-GT Ministerial Meeting and Senior Officials Meeting in October 2009 in Melaka, Malaysia. Flagship cooperation programmes are being planned currently between IMT-GT and the new Development Partners.

One area that both ERIA and IMT-GT have identified working closely with each other is in the area of sustainable energy supply and production with the first activity – a Biodiesel Symposium – being planned to be held in Songkhla, Thailand later this year. With Japan, one area being proposed is Food Security – a more specific recommendation will be forwarded to the Japanese counterparts in the coming 17th SOM/MM in Krabi, Thailand. These two areas are incidentally high-priority global programmes; and it is inspiring to observe that directives made by the IMT-GT Leaders in the Third and Fourth IMT-GT Summits in November 2007 (in Singapore) and February 2009 (in Hua Hin, Thailand), respectively, are taking shape implementation-wise.

Asian Development Bank, IMT-GT’s 16-year loyal and life-time Development Partner has also designed new strategies to support IMT-GT in moving forward. ADB is currently in the process of establishing the Subregional Project Development Facility (SPDF) with the objectives of providing both a grant window and a reimbursable window to provide capacity building as well as feasibility assessments of high priority projects, as well as project funding to finance flagship infrastructure projects in the IMT-GT subregion.

A meeting held between the directors of ADB’s Southeast Asia Department and IMT-GT and BIMP-EAGA through CIMT and BIMP-EAGA Facilitation Centre (FC) hosted by the Malaysian Senior Official (Mr. Razali Che Mat, Director of Regional Development Section, Economic Planning Unit) on 19 May 2010 in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia is a reflection of another level of ADB’s plan to further strategise ADB’s support for IMT-GT (and BIMP-EAGA).